Comments on: Facebook celebrates royal wedding by nuking 50 protest groupshttp://boingboing.net/2011/04/29/facebook-celebrates.html
Brain candy for Happy MutantsMon, 15 Sep 2014 23:11:17 +0000hourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1By: Mekanikalhttp://boingboing.net/2011/04/29/facebook-celebrates.html#comment-1096961
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1096961I’ve always thought the whole free speech conundrum could be summed up with the government preventing it. Last time I checked, Facebook is hardly a government and is more a private entity. They can censor whatever they want, or whatever they are paid to censor. Am I wrong, or has someone hit Corys funnybone and this is a kneejerk reaction?
]]>By: hannahfbhttp://boingboing.net/2011/04/29/facebook-celebrates.html#comment-1097985
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1097985hey, petition here to ask for an inquiry into the ‘facebookpurge’, signatures v welcome:

]]>By: Cowicidehttp://boingboing.net/2011/04/29/facebook-celebrates.html#comment-1096963
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1096963Facebook disgusts me, but when you look at the absolute dick that runs the company, it all makes sense.
]]>By: jayaravahttp://boingboing.net/2011/04/29/facebook-celebrates.html#comment-1096966
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1096966The organisations named all broke the Terms of Use by creating a ‘profile’ for a organisation. The ToU state that you can only have personal profiles, but make provision for groups with ‘pages’. It’s pretty clear when you sign up. RTFM and stop whining.

It was probably just a low level db admin cleaning up the files and indexes, on what was likely to be a low impact day. Most users benefited from this action.

Facebook is a *USA* company who have a habit of flipping the bird at *anyone* who tells them how to do business. It’s hard to imagine how the Queen, or the British Government, or British Police could have successfully exerted pressure on them to do anything on any day.

]]>By: The Gunnerhttp://boingboing.net/2011/04/29/facebook-celebrates.html#comment-1096968
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1096968Cory, why summarily yoke these two items together? They’re both interesting and valid, but attempting to conflate them uncomfortably under the Royal Wedding thing doesn’t act as a force-mutliplier at all, because the link is so arbitrary and tenuous: rather it has the knock-on effect of diluting the reaction to each of the stories because you seem – really uncharacteristically – to be reaching a bit in conflating the two…
]]>By: peterbruellshttp://boingboing.net/2011/04/29/facebook-celebrates.html#comment-1096969
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1096969Oh please, Facebook flips the bird when it can get away with it.

Even Google has to bend and spread ‘em when presenting their search results here in Germany.

They all love their image of being open and free and “no the government”, but they also love their dollars, euros, pounds and yuans much, much more.

Besides, Cory doesn’t say that they did this at the behest of any government. They most probably did this on their own. And very likely for the reasons you mentioned.

That it happened at the same days as the wedding was just a happy coincidence, reminding people that facebook is for sharing pictures, farming smurfberries and being “fans” of products.

That’s what it was designed to be for and that’s what it will remain.

Though I don’t think that it is that big of a problem – the people who are afraid to follow a link beyond the “You are now leaving FaceBook”-FUD are the ones who would also not even “like” one of those protest groups.

]]>By: rabatjoiehttp://boingboing.net/2011/04/29/facebook-celebrates.html#comment-1096976
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1096976The two people arrested in the video linked at the end of the article were also featured on a VBS.tv documentary on the goings on around the Royal Wedding, it’s quite worth a watch: http://www.vbs.tv/en-gb/watch/rule-britannia/rule-britannia-royal-wedding
]]>By: steeroyhttp://boingboing.net/2011/04/29/facebook-celebrates.html#comment-1096979
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1096979I’m not even sure what two items you’re talking about. Is it because the deleted pages weren’t protesting against the royal wedding?

Well, sure, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t why they were shut down. The police and the media evidently can’t tell the difference between different activists for different causes with different political beliefs.

This week the Metropolitan police have been releasing statements equating all protest with criminal activity. Newspapers have lapped it up, labelling anyone who wanted to protest for any cause on Friday a “potential anarchist”.

On Thursday they raided a series of legal squats and community projects, arresting anyone they could think of a charge for (like “abstraction of electricity”) and banning them from central London until next week, in an operation they admit was brought forward ahead of the wedding.

None of these people were planning to protest against the wedding – they were mainly anti-cuts activists. Didn’t stop the police deliberately restricting their movement on the wedding day. Dissent is dissent and they don’t want it.

]]>By: Hakanhttp://boingboing.net/2011/04/29/facebook-celebrates.html#comment-1096981
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1096981<sarcasm >They had it coming, I bet they had a mime in the group as well.</sarcasm>
]]>By: Thebeshttp://boingboing.net/2011/04/29/facebook-celebrates.html#comment-1097237
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1097237“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.”- Benito Mussolini

Our current system of corporate and state power is, of course, far more complex than Mussolini and other early fascists ever imagined.
It pretends to offer choices, but ultimately boils down to the same thing, and is best termed “soft fascism”- a kinder gentler way of being screwed out of freedom and democracy.

1) a US corporation possibly behaving with corporate self interest in the way any corp, US or otherwise would – no surprise there then.

2) The Met(?) possibly overreacting, certainly moving pre-emptively and behaving with heavy-handed, and quite amusingly camera-aware ‘good manners’ as they do so.

Unless we’re subscribing to the Bilderbergs and the Illuminati being behind all of this, they’re so unconnected as to be irrelevant, unless we’re arguing so generally that all bad s**t is the result of oppression by ‘the Man’, man. And arguing that generally is also known as pointlessly blowing hot air and preaching to the choir, something this site rather magnificently doesn’t do as a rule.

]]>By: pmhparishttp://boingboing.net/2011/04/29/facebook-celebrates.html#comment-1096985
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1096985What better way to attempt to ride on the coattails of a popular event than to try to link a royal wedding with groups that stupidly cross the TOU & get deleted.

It’s my impression that even royalist Britons well, most of them – wouldn’t accept actual political intervention by them.

I guess they like the fact that they have a head of state they can either revere or bitch about, but they don’t have to take the blame, because no one elected them.

]]>By: PaulRhttp://boingboing.net/2011/04/29/facebook-celebrates.html#comment-1096997
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1096997Jeepers, that didn’t stop Juan Carlos of Spain.
]]>By: Sorkhttp://boingboing.net/2011/04/29/facebook-celebrates.html#comment-1097001
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1097001Correlation does not imply causation.
]]>By: Pope Ratzohttp://boingboing.net/2011/04/29/facebook-celebrates.html#comment-1097003
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1097003Why would anyone choose to use Facebook?
]]>By: Cynicalhttp://boingboing.net/2011/04/29/facebook-celebrates.html#comment-1097260
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1097260I’m not saying the two are linked, but if I wanted to do something that had the potential to cause bad publicity for my company, you bet your arse I’d do it during the royal wedding. Seriously; in the last two days there have been maybe two articles on the BBC News’ “Most Shared/Read” section that aren’t to do with the wedding. Note also how all the groups deleted are UK-based.

It’s not a global conspiracy or any crap like that, but people who are media savvy use massive media events to quickly bury bad news. Who’s going to report on this when “OMG! Shiny Wedding!” is guaranteed to be the lead story on every news outlet? No outcry, no harm to share price, no-one but those affected drectly even know. Standard operating procedure IMO.

]]>By: Thorzdadhttp://boingboing.net/2011/04/29/facebook-celebrates.html#comment-1097022
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1097022BB sure has gotten good at implying causation where none exists. I guess it’s about farming for clickthroughs off Google and Bing? And flying the “freedom of speech” banner when they know full-well that a private concern can edit/delete posts and accounts at-will on their own websites…as BB has done itself…without any fear of violating any ensconced freedoms.

Instead of obliquely implying some ominous nexus between the Royals and the deletion of a raft of Facebook profiles, it would have been more accurate to simply state that Facebook made Friday “Deletion Day.”

And in this small world, I can’t say anything critical about it, lest it come back to bite me.

But I hate FB. I hate their walled-garden, their sneaky way of using information and pictures for their own gain, their continuous revision of their privacy policy, …

]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2011/04/29/facebook-celebrates.html#comment-1097029
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1097029Staging an exectution of a person who is still alive today is sick – just sick. The police were surprisingly calm and gentle with them as they were elderly but it’s still their job to keep the peace. Those people went out with the specific intention of offending people and causing a rukus, if those were an anti-religion group staging an execution of Mohammad, or an anti-American group staging an execution of Obama no one would be batting an eyelid on them being removed.

Furthermore Facebook is a social networking site and not the place to be furthering your political agenda – though many people do do it – and it’s pretty common for large private businesses to censor poliical groups on their sites to prevent unneccsary conflict and douchebaggery. You don’t see guilds in WoW called ‘The British National Party’ do you?

Normally I appreciate your articles but you seem to be hate mongering here which is utterly pointless.

Hard work getting people to change their social network site! Especially when many of them seem entirely unconcerned about FB’s use of their data.

]]>By: mobius1skihttp://boingboing.net/2011/04/29/facebook-celebrates.html#comment-1097046
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1097046According to the Guardian, Facebook claims that the deletions were made as part of a large swath of deletions of “fake” profiles, ie., profiles of non-persons. Facebook now provides a “business account” vs. a general user account, whereby a business can sign up and create pages/groups without having them tied to an individual, and says they have sent emails warning owners of “fakes” to convert them to business accounts lest they face deletion, and that they will send new emails instructing them on how to recover their accounts in order to convert them.

Still, I am extremely disconcerted about Facebook’s power to simply destroy people’s hard work developing networks on a whim.

Another recent controversy involves the fact that Facebook will take down pages for false DMCA complaints, without investigating the legitimacy of those complaints or giving users an opportunity to respond to those complaints before their accounts are deactivated.

Facebook’s success as a platform depends on having a thriving user base. By demonstrating such contempt for its users rights and freedoms, Facebook is begging for the public to abandon it for a new platform that would offer greater levels of autonomy and privacy. Unfortunately, I am presently unconvinced that Diaspora will be that platform.

]]>By: Anonymoushttp://boingboing.net/2011/04/29/facebook-celebrates.html#comment-1097048
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1097048I love it when people say private entities can do whatever they want. Not a problem until those entities start larger and larger chunks of the public and the government starts handing over previously public control to them (privitization).

Sorry but when you become a defacto government you are no longer private.

Facebook is being financed by various bodies for political reasons. It doesn’t matter where on the globe those things are taking place, Facebook will follow orders from those who invest in it.
David Cameron is in direct contact with Zuckerberg, you can find videos of it if you want.
Those groups should make a class action lawsuit, both against the government and against Facebook.

]]>By: HDhttp://boingboing.net/2011/04/29/facebook-celebrates.html#comment-1097063
Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000#comment-1097063But they could choose to be neutral and instead they’ve chosen to be evil and that’s what this entire post is complaining about.
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